Outsourcing - BPO
How I Joined the Outsourcing Revolution
Mention “outsourcing” to a programmer and you may as
well be uttering profanity. The word suggests all the evils that
have befallen the Information Technology sector since the Internet
bubble burst a few years ago. We’ve been endlessly regaled
with tragic tales of American companies who have closed up shop
for many of their I.T. positions, only to “offshore”
those same jobs to programmers overseas working for less pay than
their American counterparts. A brain drain is taking place in
the once highly secure computer programming profession.
Rather than cursing the darkness, however, I found myself recently
lighting a candle (or making the problem worse, depending on your
perspective). You see, just over six months ago, I joined the
outsourcing revolution. I am therefore writing this article partly
as a confession, my own personal “mea culpa” of complicity.
No, I haven’t put myself up on the auction block to work
for Indian rupees.
What I did was stumble upon several “reverse auction”
web sites for outsourcing talent. If you haven’t heard of
them, they go by the name of Elance.com (the largest site to date)
or Guru.com. Both of these sites give companies an opportunity
to outsource their projects to freelance workers like programmers,
graphic artists and writers. Freelancers from all over the world
compete for open bid requests, offering to do these contract jobs
for a fixed price.
I happened upon a site called Rentacoder. Unlike the two sites
mentioned above, Rentacoder didn’t require a subscription
fee. Their take was a straightforward commission out of each project
cost. Within minutes I posted my resume and profile. Then I had
a choice to make. Which projects to bid on? In addition to programming
projects, they also listed writing jobs as well. I decided to
bid on some of the writing jobs first, just to see how it went,
and because I had always wanted to do some freelance writing on
the side.
Within my first week, I won a bid to write a document on Policies
and Procedures. I completed that assignment, got paid, and then
won another bid—a series of articles on stock market investing.
Very soon I was addicted. I kept doing more writing…a technical
white paper…web site content…economics articles…sales
letters…a chapter in a novel…on and on. My payments
were electronically transferred to my bank account, in New Economy
style.
This addiction has grown into a decent part-time income for the
past six months. I’ve worked for clients as far away as Australia
and Turkey, in addition to clients in the East and West coasts
in the United States. I became fixated with how easy it was to
do business this way over the Internet, where the whole world
became my market. Then I got hold of a book called Free Agent
Nation, by a fellow named Daniel Pink. It was about how “teleworkers”
such as myself are transforming America by doing business this
new-fangled way, working for “gigs” instead of permanent
commitments to one employer. I was part of another Big Thing.
Don’t misunderstand, I haven’t quit my day job just
yet.
Am I getting rich?
Hardly. I make a few hundred extra dollars a month, and yes,
I do get competition from workers in India. But now I am competing
with them. The winning bid, in this case, doesn’t always
go to the lowest bidder. Writers from America have an edge in
this arena. Some buyers of writing services prefer native English
speakers.
As I said, however, there are programming jobs posted on most
of these sites too. Can programmers from the United States make
a living strictly off these sites? Probably not. But programmers
who choose to freelance can use these sites to supplement their
income while contracting through normal staffing channels. They
might make some meaningful connections in the process.
So there it is. I got it off my chest.
“My name is Nader Ghali, and I joined the outsourcing revolution.”
I feel much better. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go
make some more bids.
Nader Ghali is a programmer living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where
he writes on a variety of issues. He may be reached at mrnader1@go.com,
and a sample of his writing portfolio can be seen at http://www.topwrite.net
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
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